“Good,” I say softly. “That’s it.”
I hand her the pills and watch her swallow them. Only then do I let myself breathe.
“I’ll be back later, okay?” I tell her, kissing her forehead.
She doesn’t answer because she’s already drifting back toward the wall.
Downstairs, Dad is at the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Work.”
My hand grips the banister. “I thought you were semi-retired.”
“I am.”
“You swore last year, Dad. You said you were done with the sixty-hour weeks.”
“I need to work, Mads.”
He does. He’s an electrician who’s spent forty years working himself to the bone to give us a life where we didn’t have to worry about the light bill. But working for himself means he can step back. He chooses his hours.
Sometimes I resent him for leaving.
I hate myself for it because I know he loves her, but when she’s like this, he can’t cope. He never could. He escapes into the tangles of wires and circuit breakers because they make sense. They have a logic. My mother’s brain doesn’t. He escapes into work, leaving the rest of us to hold our breath.
“She can’t be on her own like this,” I say quietly.
He gestures toward me like the answer is written on my forehead. “You’re here.”
“For now.”
He pauses, looking at me properly for the first time. The exhaustion in his eyes mirrors my own. “I can’t stay all day. I have a job.”
“Neither can I!” I snap, the stress from the Senator, the treadmill, and the back pain finally boiling over. “I have to work too, Dad. I have people who depend on me.”
The words are barely out of my mouth when his phone rings and the world calls him away.
He kisses my cheek. “I’ll call later.”
“Dad—”
But he’s already gone.
Fuck.
I stand in the kitchen, breathing through the pressure building behind my eyes. I have a conference call in an hour. A big one. A client whose name has been trending since dawn for all the wrong reasons. A team expecting me to fix something ugly with calm words and steady hands.
I grab my phone. My thumb hovers over the family group chat.
Piper. No answer. Probably buried in wedding fabric.
Rowan. Straight to voicemail. Probably in a different time zone or up to her eyeballs in paint.
Noah picks up on the third ring.
“Hey,” he says.
